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Alkaline Trio @ The Troubadour ~ July 21, 2011

God, I love punk rock. The fast, furious, breakneck pace of each song, lyrics driven, emotionally charged. Add in a kick ass veteran band playing a twenty three song set (23!) in a small room full of diehard fans,and I think it might be called heaven.
Alkaline Trio is Matt Skiba, Dan Andriano, and Derek Grant. The Chicago based punk rock band has been on the scene fifteen years and definitely deserve the following they have now. Out supporting their newest CD Damnesia, an acoustic best-of, the band set a sold out Troubadour on f'n fire!

The Trio busted right into "Armageddon," immediately creating a hard core pit that took over the small room that is the Troub. They busted out the hits one after another with little interplay with the crowd. It was a Dan song heavy set (Dan and Matt both write/sing songs), which weren't my favorite - until tonight. Five songs into the set, Dan stopped during "Another Innocent Girl" admitting that the song sounded like crap, exchanged his bass for one that was in tune, and told the crowd that he wasn't a proud man and the song ought to sound good. Damn, what a good man.

They went on to play ten more songs till they went acoustic with the last six, starting with "If You Had A Bad Time," at which point I was dragged into the now "safe" pit zone. An hour and twenty minutes of nonstop punk rock songs and the crowd (myself included) was begging for more. More! Skiba came out and told us they'd play only 3 more. Which was fine, as long as "Radio" was one of 'em. It was not. Bastards!

But A3 did rock the crowd for 23 damn good best-of's songs. And I did leave heaven covered in other people's sweat and a little bit of puke - punk rock!

Set ListSet list: Armageddon , In Vein, Private Eye, Nose Over Tail, Another Innocent Girl, Goodbye Forever, I'm Dying Tomorrow, Old Skool Reasons, Mr. Chainsaw, Maybe I'll Catch Fire, Trouble Breathing, Mercy Me, San Francisco, This Could Be Love, If You Had a Bad Time, Clavicle, You've Got So Far To Go, Blue In The Face, Olde English 800, I Held Her In My Eyes
Encore: Bleeder, Crawl, 97
photo by P.Viani